Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/168

146 HISTORY OF GREECE. the duty ; saying that he would have willingly served under Xenophon, if the latter had accepted the office, but that it was a good thing for Xenophon himself to have declined, since De^ip- pus had already poisoned the mind of Anaxibius against him, although he (Cheirisophus) had emphatically contradicted the calumnies. 1 On the next day, the army sailed forward, under the command of Cheirisophus, to Herakleia ; near which town they were hos- pitably entertained, and gratified with a present of meal, wine, and bullocks, even greater than they had received at Sinope. It now appeared that Xenophon had acted wisely in declining the sole command ; and also that Cheirisophus, though elected commander, yet having been very long absent, was not really of so much im- portance in the eyes of the soldiers as Xenophon. In the camp near Herakleia, the so^iers became impatient that their generals (for the habit of looking upon Xenophon as one of them still con- tinued) took no measures to procure money for them. The Achaean Lykon proposed that they should extort a contribution of no less than three thousand staters of Kyzikus (about sixty thousand At- tic drachmae, or ten talents, equal to two thousand three hun- dred pounds) from the inhabitants of Herakleia; another man immediately outbid this proposition, and proposed that they should require ten thousand staters a full month's pay for the army. It was moved that Cheirisophus and Xenophon should go to the Herakleots as envoys with this demand. But both of them indig- nantly refused to be concerned in so unjust an extortion from a Grecian city which had just received the army kindly, and sent handsome presents. Accordingly, Lykon with two Arcadian offi- cers undertook the mission, and intimated the demand, not without threats in case of non-compliance, to the Herakleots. The latter replied that they would take it into consideration. But they waited only for the departure of the envoys, and then immediately closed their gates, manned their walls, and brought in their outlying property. The project being thus baffled, Lykon and the rest turned their displeasure upon Cheirisophus and Xenophon, whom they accused of having occasioned its miscarriage. And they now began to 1 Xen. Anab. ii, 1, 32.